Tag Archives: Hugh Jessiman

Wednesday night’s 4-3 loss to the visiting Lake Erie Monsters played out like a tale of two teams for this season’s Rockford IceHogs.

After an opening period which saw the IceHogs pepper Lake Erie’s veteran goaltender, and Chicago area product, Gerald Coleman with 17 shots, but not many second chance opportunities, Rockford went into the first intermission with nothing to show for their efforts. The IceHogs then came out flat for the second period and quickly found themselves down 2-0 after some unfortunate turnovers. Despite dominating the first period, Rockford reverted to its October through mid-December form in letting game get away from them on home ice. By the midway point of the third Rockford was in a 4-1 hole. But then, the IceHogs of the month of January suddenly reappeared and put up a challenge. Dylan Olsen unleashed a howitzer of a one-timer to get his team within two goals with less than two minutes to play and a late Lake Erie penalty allowed Rockford to pull within one with 18 seconds to go.

This was the second consecutive game in which Rockford greatly outshot its opponent and lost. Last Friday in Rosemont, the IceHogs out shot the Wolves 32-18, but lost the contest 4-2. They were also down three goals with a minute left in that game.

On Wednesday night, Rockford out shot Lake Erie 17-7 in the first period. None of those chances better than when Rostislav Olesz blew by two defenseman, Cameron Gaunce and Stefan Elliott, then wristed his shot too high over the glove of Coleman, who just got a piece of Olesz’s attempt as well. Read more »

IceHogs’ center Brandon Pirri – photo: Rockford IceHogs

By Chris Block

Rockford IceHogs (8-10-1-0) drop the puck on a three-game weekend tonight when the Lake Erie Monsters (9-10-1-1) visit the BMO Harris Bank Center at 7:05. This will be the first time this season Rockford has had to play three games on consecutive days. They’ll do so again next weekend. In both cases, the first two games are at home, followed by a game day bus trip on Sunday.

Tonight’s game also marks the return of former Hogs Evan Brophey, Hugh Jessiman and defenseman Mike Brennan.

Brophey comes in on a 4-game point streak (2g, 2a). He registered his first career hat trick on 11/11/11 against San Antonio. Brophey turns 25 on Saturday. His IceHogs/Blackhawks tenure ended in suspension last March when he stepped out of the penalty box and destroyed Hamilton Bulldogs forward Hunter Bishop with an open ice blind side hit. Brophey received a season-ending 7-game suspension after playing in two subsequent games that weekend before the AHL got around to holding a hearing following the March 25th hit.

Hugh Jessiman had posted a goal in four consecutive games prior to Lake Erie’s 2-1 loss to Houston on Wednesday night. In 17 games this season, Jessiman has 7 goals and 9 points. Last season, prior to being sent to the Panthers in the Jack Skille-Michael Frolik/Alexander Salak swap, Jessiman had just 3 goals and 5 points in 25 games with Rockford. Jessiman was struggling with groin issues while with the IceHogs. Read more »

Arriving at the quarter-mark of the season (19th of 76 games) on Saturday night, the divisional last-place Rockford IceHogs were riding high as they welcomed the Western Conference-leading Oklahoma City Barons.

Rockford was looking to draw to an even .500 record and continue to build momentum off back-to-back home wins, 6-3 and 7-3, this week over San Antonio and Peoria.

The Barons rode the four hour bus ride in from Grand Rapids after holding on for a 5-4 win over the Griffins on Friday night.

In a tightly-checked and hard-fought affair, Oklahoma City prevailed in Rockford Saturday night by a 3-1 score and the IceHogs now find themselves two games under the .500 mark.

“I think they played a good defensive game against us,” alternate captain Brian Fahey said after the loss.

“We had a hard time getting to their net. Its not that we didn’t have chances, we just had a tough time getting to the second and third chances.”

After an evenly matched opening twenty minutes, Oklahoma City got on the board at 1:06 of the second on controversial goal call by referee Dave Lewis.

IceHogs goaltender Alexander Salak fiercely disputed the call, feeling the puck had not crossed the line. However, further review proved the puck did and the Barons’ Philippe Cornet, the AHL’s leading goal scorer, had his 14th of the season.

“I thought we had a great first period,” said defenseman Dylan Olsen.

“Second period we were a little off.”

The scored stayed 1-0 until 2:41 of the third period when Cornet netted his 15th goal, set up brilliantly by winger Ryan Keller for the easy put-home to give the Barons the 2-0 advantage.

This tally came seconds after the IceHogs’ Brandon Bollig squandered a golden opportunity to tie the game at the other end when he missed an open side by shooting a puck through Oklahoma City goaltender David LeNeveu’s crease, missing the net entirely.

Brian Connelly gave Rockford life late on a power play when he unleashed a slap shot from the right point through traffic to trim the Barons’ lead to 2-1 with 7:23 to go. Wingers Jeremy Morin and Brandon Segal obstructed LeNeveu’s vision as Brett McLean set Connelly up for the shot.

With his team down 2-1, Ted Dent pulled Alexander Salak from his net for the extra attacker with a minute and a half to go in regulation. Twenty seconds later, Ryan O’Marra was the benefactor of a Rockford turnover and sealed the Barons’ win emphatically with an empty-net tally at 18:57 of the period. Read more »

A special Friday afternoon edition of TheThirdManIn~Radio today. Dieter Kurtenbach joins me to break down the Jack Skille-Michael Frolik trade piece by piece. We also have a long discussion and share our take on the process of how trade rumors take a life of their own, the true villains in the process and the relationship between main stream or professional reporters, amateurs, hobbyists, pretenders and the general audience. That and so much more.

— Michael Frolik not so “versatile” after all
— Where newest Hawk fits best
— Comparisons to Kris Versteeg
— Michael Grosek (I resisted the Nikita Alexeev urge)
— Reflections of the Jack Skille Experience
— Will Skille score 20 in South Florida?
— The Skille-Chicago match
— Particular thing the trade didn’t accomplish
— Why Alexander Salak may have been available?
— What made Salak’s inclusion in this deal particularly strange
— Dale Tallon giving up on two 2006 1st rounder in 4 months
— Word on two Hawks’ recent goaltending draft picks
— Q, again, refusing to put his best lineup on the ice
— Perfect sense flying over Quenneville’s head
— Most important line in hockey
— Love for the Mike Fisher deal
— Some ideas for if the Blackhawks fall out of the chase
— Zach Bogosian not in play for Chicago
— A all of a sudden a web site has gone all Eklund on the Internet
— Hawks defense a sloppy mess even in victory
— Block predicts something & winds up wrong a few hours later (big shock)
— “I’ve pumped Steve Montador for a long time now” (Thanks SL)
— And so much more…..

Show returns Tuesday night, February 15th in our usual weekly time lot, 8pm central at BlogTalkRadio.com/TheThirdManIn. We say this frequently but somehow never get to it… However, we have received a lot of feedback for our last month of shows and we’ll read and answer some of those emails on Tuesday night. If you are a regular listener and have anything you’d like to hear addressed on this week’s show, send an email to the address below and I’ll do my best to get through as many as I can.

** Another huge back-to-back is upon the Rockford IceHogs this weekend as they attempt to climb back into a tough AHL West division playoff race.

40 games into the season, Rockford (19-16-1-4) is three games above .500, yet nine points out of the 4th and final playoff spot in their division. The IceHogs find hope though in that they own ‘games in hand’ on every team in their division and the majority of their second half will be spent facing those teams above them in the division.

So, while the season is far from over, every point is a big one.

Tonight the current 3rd seed in the West Division, Oklahoma City visits Rockford. These two teams have traded wild 6-5 decisions of late. The Hogs dropped a New Years Day game at Oklahoma City 2-1 on a night both IceHogs’ special teams units let them down.

Rockford has five games in hand on OKC, and trail them by nine points as well. A win tonight would put Rockford in line to reach the Barons once they catch OKC in the games played column.

Tomorrow night the San Antonio Rampage return for a rematch of this past Monday’ MetroCentre matinee, which the IceHogs took 2-1. All scoring in that one came in the third period. Goals on the Rockford side came first from Evan Brophey, then Hugh Jessiman.

San Antonio is 8 points up on Rockford and currently in 6th place. They also have played four more contests than the IceHogs to this point.

As we mentioned earlier this week, odds are the 5th place team in the West will wind up with more points than the 4-seed in the North division, thus sliding over and taking that spot. But competition for that spot will be fierce as teams currently 3rd through 7th are separated by just three points.

Games in hand don’t mean a thing if you don’t turn those into points. A mediocre start, coupled with being in the toughest division in the AHL leave Rockford with little room for error.

The IceHogs are 7-3-0-0 over the last ten games, their best stretch of the season. Kyle Beach, Evan Brophey and Hannu Toivonen have led the way, playing the best each of those three have to this point. Read more »

Goals by veterans Evan Brophey and Hugh Jessiman were just enough Monday afternoon for the Rockford IceHogs to take a 2-1 victory over the visiting San Antonio Rampage.

Despite a dramatic discrepancy in shots heading into the third period, 24-12 in favor of the IceHogs, the game remained scoreless until Evan Brophey beat San Antonio netminder Matt Climie for his 6th goal of the season. The goal, 13 seconds into the period, ended Brophey’s 5-game goal drought.

Injury-plagued winger Hugh Jessiman struck next , giving Rockford a 2-0 lead when his one-timer from the left-side half wall found the back of the net. Jessiman, who missed a month (Dec 8-Jan 2) with a lower-body injury, had not scored since November 12th. This marked his 3rd goal of the season and first in 10 games.

Rockford has managed to put a string of wins together and put themselves 3 games above the .500 mark as they’ve hit the halfway point of the 80-game AHL season. Before Saturday night’s win in Chicago, the IceHogs hadn’t been more than a game above .500 all season. Monday’s win gives the IceHogs a three-game win streak, their first of such length and longest so far this season.

For the IceHogs, it has been inconsistency and lackluster starts which have plagued them most. Read more »

After watching his team come out flat inexplicably for fifth time in this season’s first nine home games, the Rockford head coach retreated to his bench on Saturday night exasperated for the third period.

By my count, Peters used at least twelve different line combinations over the final twenty minutes. It was orchestrated chaos and Peters’ team responded with its best period of the night, but that wasn’t even enough to get on the scoreboard.

Rockford outshot Peoria 12-6 in the third and 31-21 in the game but Peoria won the only count that matters, defeating IceHogs by a score of 5-0 at the MetroCentre.

In the win, Peoria rookie Jake Allen set a Rivermen AHL (2005-current) franchise record for shutouts in a single season by white-washing the Rockford shooters 31 times, to post his 4th shutout in just 8 starts. The previous Peoria shutout record (3) was set by Manny Legace during the 2008-09 season.

Saturday’s was a team shutout. Allen was very good and made some great stops locating pucks through screens and one-on-one challenges. But his defense also cleared a lot of rebounds and beat the IceHogs to most of the loose pucks in the Peoria zone.

The latter point was the story of the night. Rockford could not match Peoria’s intensity from the initial puck drop through to the final horn. A few players tried and succeeded in spurts. Garnet Exelby showed some snarl late in the first, but the score was already 3-0 by then. Kyle Beach had his best, most physical shift in weeks with five minutes to go in the middle period. Jeremy Morin stood up to Peoria defenders on occasion one night after getting into a spirited fight with Red Wings’ defensive prospect Brendan Smith. Read more »

While the team hasn’t officially acknowledged this, the Blackhawks have re-signed left-side power-winger Bryan Bickell to a three-year, one-way NHL contract.

According to a report by Adam Jahns of the Chicago Sun-Times, Bickell will earn salary dollars of $500,000, 525,000 and 600,000 over the next three seasons respectively, while his “cap hit” (the average payout of the contract which comes down to total dollar value divided by length) will be $541,666 for each season.

Bickell, 24, who was a favorite of head coach Joel Quenneville in his limited opportunity with the club this past season and playoff, will become an un-restricted free agent at the end of the contract, summer of 2013.

It’s interesting Bickell’s agent would pin his client down to such a low figure for the next three years when Bickell has a big chance to play an integral role with the Hawks going forward. The deal is a steal for Stan Bowman. At worst, he has an affordable third and fourth line guy, salary-wise, being as cheap as they come. Enthusiastically, we could come to know Bickell as one of the bigger “bargains” in the National Hockey League two and three years from now.

I find it hard to believe Bickell couldn’t have negotiated a better deal. Two-years on a one-way for the same money he agreed to could have landed him in a position to enroll in the arbitration process in 2012, one year short of his UFA year (as it sits now in the current CBA, for players with expiring contracts who are 27 or older). As it looks now, Bickell could stand to earn a million or considerably more after the next two seasons should he see good minutes and continue to progress. While Bickell hasn’t shown near the same scoring touch, he’s not all that far behind Troy Brouwer in terms of iimpact he can make with this club. Specifically with the departure of Dustin Byfuglien, Quenneville needs all the size he can get, and thus Bickell will see a lot of important minutes if he can carry his level of performance over from the past spring. This is after all the same Bryan Bickell who fit in nicely in spots on a line with Jonathan Toews and Patrick Kane. That said, this deal could wind up more regrettable for Bickell should the new CBA push the UFA age back, or forward, a year or more when the new bargaining agreement is drawn (hopefully) prior to the 2012-13 season.

This is the kind of contract a young Canadian kid thinks is great when he first signs it. Then he changes agents two years later when he realizes he wasted a chance to make a lot more money at a young age.

Great deal for Stan Bowman. For Bickell, we’ll wait and see.

— Evan Brophey, Blackhawks 3rd round pick (67th overall) in the 2005 Draft, re-signed a 1-year deal on Thursday. This also hasn’t been acknowledged by the Hawks. There is a method to these things that go over the heads in hockey operations. Read more »